Jorge Luis Borges

The classic by Latin America's finest writer of the twentieth century—a true literary sensation—with an introduction by cyber-author William Gibson. The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' fiction "The Library," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths.

This new edition of Labyrinths, the classic representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's biographical and critical essay, a poignant tribute by André Maurois, and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new introduction bringing Borges' influence and importance into the twenty-first century.

“Borges’s composed, carefully wrought, gnarled style is at once the means of his art and its object—his way of ordering and giving meaning to the bizarre and terrifying world he creates: it is a brilliant, burnished instrument, and it is quite adequate to the extreme demands his baroque imagination makes of it . . . . Absolutely and most vividly original.”—Saturday Review

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges’s Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges’s genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

After almost a half a century of scrupulous devotion to his art, Jorge Luis Borges personally compiled this anthology of his work—short stories, essays, poems, and brief mordant “sketches,” which, in Borges’s hands, take on the dimensions of a genre unique in modern letters.

In this anthology, the author has put together those pieces on which he would like his reputation to rest; they are not arranged chronologically, but with an eye to their “sympathies and differences.” A Personal Anthology, therefore, is not merely a collection, but a new composition.

A collection of interviews now available from New Directions for the first time The words of a genius: Borges at Eighty transcends our expectations of ordinary conversation. In these interviews with Barnstone, Dick Cavett, and Alastair Reid, Borges touches on favorite writers (Whitman, Poe, Emerson) and familiar themes — labyrinths, mystic experiences, and death — and always with great, throw-away humor. For example, discussing nightmares, he concludes,“When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.”

LibraryThing Review For me, a great introduction to Borges. Some very persistent ideas with a mythical quality: realities, labyrinths, the nature of 'knowledge', plot arcs, storytelling, feedback loops. I already have JLB's Labyrinths lined up to read next.Highly recommended.

LibraryThing Review After hearing so many good things about Borges, I decided to read this book. Unfortunately I found it to be rather unexciting. Some seem to take a lot more from this book than I did, but to each their own.

LibraryThing Review If ever a book deserved a six star rating, this is yet. Borges writes ten page stories that have more packed into them philosophically, intellectually, and entertainingly than any 600- or 1000-page ...

LibraryThing Review I once stumped the great Don Miller (of Blue Like Jazz fame) with a story from this collection. Miller had a theory that "all fiction has a setting." I pulled out the story "The Babylonian lottery ...

LibraryThing Review I would classify Ficciones as fiction for philosophers. Actually, a more contemporary term for philosophers is information scientists, and Borges' short stories are all about thought experiments ...

LibraryThing Review Have read it in Spanish and in Borges' own translation into English. Two different books as he uses the older concept of translatio imagii rather than slavishly translating word-for-word. Got me into ...

LibraryThing Review My first foray into Jorge Luis Borges and least of it is that I am very intrigued and heartedly desire to read more of his work. The Library of Babel being my favorite, but The South is all parts ...

LibraryThing Review Reviewing a book by a 'master' of literature always feels like a dangerous undertaking, so I am going to call this a response instead. I read Borges for a class called Philosophy in Literature. While ...

LibraryThing Review I read this in a bilingual (Spanish - French) edition, but I found the Spanish to be at advanced level, a bit too hard for the intermediate speaker I am. What can I say... Borges has created (a) very ...

LibraryThing Review 1040 Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges translated from the Spanish by Emece Editores (read 10 Jan 1970) In the final issue of Time in the Sixties there appeared a list of 20 Notable Books of the Sixties ...

LibraryThing Review Ficciones is comprised of two anthologies, the Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices. The first is absolutely brilliant, the second more conventional but still good. Borges had a talent for ...

LibraryThing Review I have the Everyman's Library edition of Ficciones, published in 1993. The original was published in 1956 by Emecè Editores S.A., of Buenos Aires. I imagine the Buenos Aires of 1956, and suspect that ...

LibraryThing Review Borges is a writer who I find hard to describe. His stories are highly intellectual, full of allusions to history and literature and religion and philosophy, and the subjects often deal with esoteric ...

LibraryThing Review Borges' Ficciones consists of two "books" of 17 short works of fiction published mostly in the 1940s. I'm told they're landmarks in not just Latin American fiction but modernist literature. Woven ...

LibraryThing Review I'm not a huge fan of short stories, so I wasn't that thrilled when I picked this up and realized that's what I was in for. It was an odd collection - musings on reality, fate, chance, knowledge ...

LibraryThing Review Wow. Just WOW. I'm going to have to read these again. They're so complex and multilayered and unbelievably rich. I don't think that anyone can claim to have extracted all of their meaning in one ...

LibraryThing Review Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges Published 1944 3 stars Ficciones by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges is really a work of a master. The work is a series of short stories by this incredibly intelligent ...

LibraryThing Review I adore Gene Wolfe, and one of his largest influences is the Argentinian author Borges. Allusions to Borges’ work abound in Wolfe’s, and I had recently read The Shadow of the Wind which had its own ...

A collection of interviews now available from New Directions for the first time The words of a genius: Borges at Eighty transcends our expectations of ordinary conversation. In these interviews with Barnstone, Dick Cavett, and Alastair Reid, Borges touches on favorite writers (Whitman, Poe, Emerson) and familiar themes — labyrinths, mystic experiences, and death — and always with great, throw-away humor. For example, discussing nightmares, he concludes,“When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.”

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